John Mccain’s track record on Iraq

[A casual stroll to the market, mingling with the locals]

Comment: Who but politically naive Americans (with apparently short memories) take John Mccain for an Iraq expert? Not to be critical or anything, but will somebody please tell me how a man with this track record on Iraq sells himself successfully to almost half of the country as the only candidate with enough foreign policy experience to get us out of the mess he helped create, in addition to being wrong on nearly every one of his predictions? The section below is taken from Mission Accomplished!, by the founders of the Institute of Expertology, a group which surveys expert opinion. They did an in depth study on the Iraq “experts,” and here is what they found from, among others, John Mccain, the “foreign policy expert” of the U.S. Senate… Click here for their full article in The Nation

How would American troops be greeted? “I believe…that the Iraqi people will greet us as liberators.” (March 20, 2003)

Did Saddam Hussein have a nuclear program that posed an imminent threat to the United States? “Saddam Hussein is on a crash course to construct a nuclear weapon.” ( October 10, 2002)

Will a war with Iraq be long or short? “This conflict is… going to be relatively short.” (March 23, 2003)

How is the war going? “I would argue that the next three to six months will be critical.” (September 10, 2003)

How is it going (almost two months later, from the war’s “greatest critic”)? “I think the initial phases of [the war] were so spectacularly successful that it took us all by surprise.” (October 31, 2003)

Is this war really necessary? “Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war.” (August 30, 2004)

How is it going? (Recurring question for the war’s “greatest critic”) “We will probably see significant progress in the next six months to a year.” (December 4, 2005)

Will the President’s “surge” of troops into Baghdad and surrounding areas that the senator had been calling for finally make the difference? “We can know fairly well [whether the surge is working] in a few months.” (February 4, 2007)